Whether you want to create a document outlining your life for future generations, or simply frame your history from a place of power and optimism, creating a Bucket of Awesome is your solution.

Bucket of Awesome is a writing journey to help you put your life into joyful and hopeful focus. Completing this project will help you learn and remember all the things that have made your life so remarkable.

You will get the benefit of a renewed sense of gratitude and purpose and those who come after will be inspired by a document that tells the story of your unique life and perspective.

Sign up for my free e-course and get started today!

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choose from each week.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing. Thank you for supporting my website!

***Update – The Bucket of Awesome Ambassador Program is drawing to a close, but please sign up below if you’d like to be on the mailing list for future updates and activities.***

It’s happening.

The third, and possibly most epic, Drops of Awesome book is almost here. It arrived at my publisher from the printer and hits shelves and interwebs March 7th! Sign up at the bottom for an early look at the book.

1. To improve your life by changing the way you tell your story.
2. To give you a framework and thought-provoking questions to help you record your personal history in an engaging and positive way.

Change your story by how you tell your story – Drops of Awesome style.

If this idea speaks to you like it yammers to me, I’d love to have you join our promotional team as an Ambassador of Awesome.

Ambassadors of Awesome for this project will receive an advance digital copy of the book and an invitation to join a closed Facebook group where we can share our Bucket of Awesome journeys and talk about our progress.

In return, you agree to receive email from me and the Familius team and help us get the word out about the book through participating in as many of the weekly missions as you can. I would love your help telling the world how Awesome they are. We’ve had so much fun as a team with the past two books. (As a side note, we are building the list from scratch so please sign up below if you’re interested in joining us, even if you helped us with a past project.)

What Do You Know About Your Childhood Firsts?

What do you know about your early life? How about your childhood firsts?

What was your first word?

Your first foods?

How old were you when you reached your first major milestones? Were you an early or late walker? Did you talk much as a young child? How old were you when you lost your first tooth?

Today is almost like another list day, but you can add more details to these stories if you like. What other important childhood firsts can you think of?

**We can change our lives by how we tell our stories. Journal along with me as I excavate my past for the joy, the goodness, the Awesome. When we’re done, we’ll have a whole Bucket of Awesome, a story to inspire the people we love, and a brighter perspective of who we really are.**

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing but it helps keep the Awesome flowing. Thanks!

Journaling with Lists

Let’s talk a bit today about the journaling or personal history process. It can be really overwhelming to sit down and just, “Tell Your Story.” Just like with any writing project, it’s easier to start with an outline before hammering out the entire thing.

With journaling, it can be helpful to start by making lists. Instead of writing a detailed description of all the places you ever lived, start by writing a list of places. This will give you something quick and easy to do so you can taste success and progress. It also sort of unlocks your brain and helps you remember things you may not have thought about in years.

Later, you can go back and sketch in details about each of those places or at least the ones that really matter to you.

Today, let’s make a few lists:

List the people who you consider to be true family. They may or may not all be actually related to you.

What towns or cities have you lived in?

Which foods do you love?

See? Easy peasy. You could fill these in later with reasons you love each of those family members, details about the towns and cities, and specific memories about those foods and how you came to love them.

But today, just make lists. And then eat some ice cream. But only if it’s one of the foods you love.

**We can change our lives by how we tell our stories. Journal along with me as I excavate my past for the joy, the goodness, the Awesome. When we’re done, we’ll have a whole Bucket of Awesome, a story to inspire the people we love, and a brighter perspective of who we really are.**

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing but it helps keep the Awesome flowing. Thanks!

Laughter and humor are a huge part of my life. I honestly don’t know who I’d be without them. A sadder person? Probably. A person with fewer wrinkles on my face? Definitely.

How would you describe your laugh?

When was the last time you laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe? Where were you and what set you off?

Who makes you laugh more than anyone else in the world? What is it about him or her that gives you the giggles?

**We can change our lives by how we tell our stories. Journal along with me as I excavate my past for the joy, the goodness, the Awesome. When we’re done, we’ll have a whole Bucket of Awesome, a story to inspire the people we love, and a brighter perspective of who we really are.**

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing but it helps keep the Awesome flowing. Thanks!

Write about the first home you ever remember living in. Where was it located? Who lived there? What color were the walls? How did it feel? What did you love about your first home?

The first home I remember was located in a semi-sketchy part of town. We lived in government-assisted housing while my dad finished grad school. However, I was oblivious to any problems with our living arrangements. I loved that apartment and my mind floods with happy memories when I picture those green and white checkered curtains and the grassy area in the middle where we would play.

Your first home might not have been ideal, but focus on what was good about it. A favorite room? A favorite person you lived with?

Where did your Awesome journey begin?

**We can change our lives by how we tell our stories. Journal along with me as I excavate my past for the joy, the goodness, the Awesome. When we’re done, we’ll have a whole Bucket of Awesome, a story to inspire the people we love, and a brighter perspective of who we really are.**

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing but it helps keep the Awesome flowing. Thanks!

Who were the first people that loved you? Maybe you knew someone loved you right at birth and maybe not until years later. It’s okay. This is your story, not anyone else’s.

When was the first time you knew you were loved? That’s a kind of birth in itself, right? How did you know you were loved? If this love happened at an age earlier than your brain can reliably remember, have you heard stories about things others did for you to show love?

**We can change our lives by how we tell our stories. Journal along with me as I excavate my past for the joy, the goodness, the Awesome. When we’re done, we’ll have a whole Bucket of Awesome, a story to inspire the people we love, and a brighter perspective of who we really are.**

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing but it helps keep the Awesome flowing. Thanks!

We are all storytellers.

Every day in little ways we each tell the stories of our lives. We tell them to others. Sometimes we write them down. Mostly, we repeatedly tell them to ourselves.

And how we tell them makes a HUGE difference in how we see ourselves.

We decide which stories get told over and over again. The more we tell them, the more important they become in the canon of who we are.

We decide how we tell them. The tone of our stories becomes the tone and direction of our lives.

Which stories will you choose to tell?

So many amazing things have happened in my life. There have been incredibly hard things too. Which stories do I focus on? Which stories receive my time and attention?

Do you know one of those people who is always ready with a tale of disaster and heartache?

“How was your day?” you ask.

She rolls her eyes and settles into a long and tragic story about how it’s been the worst day of her life and everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. She does this every time you speak to her.

I know other people who always seem in a great mood. When I ask them what they’ve been up to, they usually tell me about some success or joyful experience. They are genuinely happy and, in contrast to the first type of person, it seems that their lives are overflowing with Awesome.

Is the second friend just luckier than the first friend? Does she just live a charmed life? I don’t think so. I know we all have a broad range of experiences and some weeks are harder than others. Some lives are harder than others. But in many cases, our lives are as happy as we decide they will be.

When we choose to spend the majority of our time telling uplifting stories or simply finding the uplift in our difficult stories, we and everyone around us will be inspired.

How will you tell your story?

When I look back at my experiences with postpartum anxiety and depression, I can see myself as a victim, or a loser, or a hero who overcame something awful and used the experience to make positive changes in my life.

My view of this has changed over the years. Today I choose to think of myself as going through something earth-shattering and then being miraculously preserved so I could emerge stronger and kinder than I was before.

If that’s my story, then it informs everything I do. I’m on a hero’s journey. If I see myself as a victim, that will inform everything I do as well.

I internalize that story. I tell it. I refine it. I become it.

If your life is a Bucket, you decide what you will fill it with. I’m aiming to have a Bucket of Awesome.

How can I fill my Bucket of Awesome?

Over the coming weeks and months, I want us to do an experiment together. On Saturdays I will post a journal prompt. As we work through these prompts, we will choose what stories to tell and how to tell them.

We can change our lives by how we tell our stories. Journal along with me as I excavate my past for the joy, the goodness, the Awesome. When we’re done, we’ll have a whole Bucket of Awesome, a story to inspire the people we love, and a brighter perspective of who we really are.